Quest of the Gypsies
Gipsy Smith
Cornelius Smith was an English gypsy. Usually he kept only three steps ahead of the law. Sometimes he was caught for pitching the family tent on a lord's estate or letting his horses graze on a farmer's crops. Then would come the inevitable jail term. He never had enough money to pay his fine.
Smith first heard the gospel from the lips of a prison chaplain. Back in his cell, he cried, but there was no one to guide him.
When his term ended, he soon was busy making trinkets, fiddling in the liquor shops, and endlessly moving on in hopes of greater opportunities. He forgot all about the chaplain's message until the day his wife died of smallpox.
"I'm trying to pray," she gasped. "But I keep seeing a black hand coming before me showing me my sins."
Cornelius tried to tell his wife what he had heard in prison. She listened, then smiled.
"I believe," she said. "Be a good father to my children." He promised that he would. Then she died.
Cornelius and his motherless brood of six set out across the meadows. Often his children overheard him saying, "I don't know how to be good. How will I get my burden taken away?"
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Soon Cornelius was visited by his two brothers, Woodlock and Bartholomew. "Brothers," Cornelius confided, "I have a burden of sin I must get moved."
To his astonishment the brothers answered, "We feel the same way. We have a burden. But who will help us? We poor gypsies cannot read."
"Let's go to London town and find a church," Cornelius suggested.
"Agreed."
On the way the three brothers stopped at a tavern. "Can you tell us how to have our sins forgiven?" they asked the lady innkeeper.
"Oh, my soul," she groaned. "I have been troubled about my sins. But I have a book upstairs that might help you."
The book was Pilgrim's Progress. When they reached the place where Pilgrim's burden dropped off as he gazed at the cross, one brother cried, "That's what I long for. I want my burden taken away."
A few nights later they neared London. Cornelius put his horses into a farmer's field, intending to take them out before daybreak. That night he dreamed of Christ. Holding up nail-pierced hands the figure said, "I suffered this for you. When you surrender all, I will save you."
When he took his horses from the field the next morning, he vowed never to sin willingly again.
"Where can I find a gospel meeting?" he asked a road worker.
"I'll take you to one tonight on Latimer Road," the worker offered.
Cornelius, his children, and his brothers went to church. The people were singing, "I do believe, I will believe,
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that Jesus died for me," when Cornelius fell to the floor. A few moments later he rose up shouting, "I'm converted! I'm converted!" At this, his son Rodney ran out of the church, thinking his father had gone crazy.
Brother Bartholomew also was converted that evening. He and Cornelius went back to their tents singing heartily, "I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me."
Then brother Woodlock found Christ. The three brothers formed a gypsy evangelistic team and went roaming over the countryside to preach and sing the gospel.
Cornelius' son sixteen-year-old Rodney, noticed the change in his father's life. He came to trust the Saviour a few years later and declared, "God has called me to preach."
In the year 1876, Rodney taught himself to read with a Bible and an English dictionary. He practiced preaching in a turnip patch.
Today Rodney is remembered as Gipsy Smith, the world famous evangelist who shook two continents for Christ.
